‍How to Measure The ROI of TikTok Shop Affiliate Program

As TikTok continues to dominate social commerce, getting your target audience's attention on the platform is becoming quite competitive. Ecommerce companies are trying to leverage the power of affiliate marketing on TikTok Shop to get that traction.

But, as easy as it is to launch an affiliate campaign and find thousands of creators for targeted collaboration, making sure your campaign is profitable is another ballgame. 

The solution is to track your affiliate program’s KPIs religiously, analyze what's working (and what's not), and optimize your strategy based on the data you collect.

In today’s article, we will discuss how to measure the ROI of your TikTok shop affiliate program and keep your strategies aligned with your business goals. 

3 Reasons to track the KPI of your affiliate program

If you want your TikTok Shop affiliate program to work, it must be strategically aligned with your business goals. To make sure your efforts are on track, it is essential to monitor your KPIs. Let's break down the reasons further: 

1. KPI tracking generates tangible insights into your affiliate campaign’s profitability. It will help you identify underperforming affiliates, ineffective discounts, or channels.
2. Affiliate metrics can show you real-time trends and engagement patterns in your niche, pinpointing untapped opportunities for you to scale your program and drive more revenue.
3. You can use insights generated from affiliate KPI tracking to provide specific and actionable feedback on how your affiliates can improve their performance. 

What affiliate metrics should you be measuring?

Targeting and visibility metrics

Targeting and visibility metrics highlight the exposure your affiliate content is getting, offering insights into its reach and appeal to the target audience. 

1. Number of affiliates in your program

The number of affiliates in your program reflects the size and scale of your affiliate marketing efforts. It also shows that you're promoting your program well and not waiting for people to discover it.

A higher number of affiliates increases your chances of reaching new audiences and generating more sales. 

Tracking this number helps you understand the program’s appeal and whether more people are willing to represent your brand. 

Bonus tip ⛄: Apart from the number, you can target collaborations with the right creators within a similar niche to increase the possibility of reaching the right audience instead of a large audience.

2. Link clicks

Link clicks indicate how many users/viewers have clicked on the links shared by your affiliates. An increase in clicks signifies that your affiliate program is reaching the right audience who are interested in the products you sell.

However, if your sales are stagnant despite high clicks, it may indicate that there is something wrong with your website or product. 

In that case, you have to revisit three things: 

• Whether your landing pages or product listing pages are clear and easy to navigate. 
• If the value proposition your affiliates are promoting about your product is aligned with what you promote on your website.
• Whether there is a lack of alignment between their content and your brand identity. 

This will help you find out what exactly needs to be improved in your strategy.

You can track both your link clicks and the number of affiliates in your program from Social Snowball's analytics dashboard. Simply log in and click on “analytics” from the left hand side panel to find them. 

Sales metrics

While engagement and visibility are important, sales metrics will help you quantify the success of your TikTok Shop affiliate program. Here are the metrics you should track:

1. Revenue generated 

Knowing the revenue your affiliate campaigns generate gives you a clear picture of the sales your campaign has driven. With these insights, you can determine your best performing affiliate programs, if you have been running multiple programs with different segmentations on TikTok. 

Another KPI is the revenue generated by your top-performing affiliates. This helps you identify who is getting you the maximum sales in your affiliate network. With this information, you can do three things:

• Reward them with bonus gifts.
• Increase the commissions by moving them to a higher level tier.
• Use their content or strategies as an example to motivate other affiliates.

2. Return on investment (ROI)

ROI refers to the amount of profit you generate after deducting the cost of running the affiliate program.

You can calculate it using this formula > Revenue generated - Amount invested

But to calculate the amount invested, you need to consider multiple factors, such as - 

• How much did you invest in affiliate payouts?
• How much did you invest in promotional discounts used by customers?

With Social Snowball, you won't have to worry about calculating the amount invested yourself, as our dashboard gives you all these data with zero manual intervention. Additionally, it also calculates your ROI based on these metrics and gives you a bird's eye view of everything that's going on in your affiliate program. 

However, apart from the amount invested in commissions and discounts, you might have incurred some other expenses outside the platform. Such as -

• Investing in software to run the program (eg. Social Snowball).
• Investing to train your affiliates with resources from industry experts.

For such expenses, you have to keep a tab on them yourself to measure your investments and get a clear picture of your ROI, taking everything into consideration. 

How to measure the ROI of your TikTok Shop affiliate program? 

There are two ways to measure your affiliate program's ROI. One is through TikTok's built-in analytics tool, and the second is through external software that can bridge the gap the native tool cannot. So let's take a look at both and see how they can help you.

1. TikTok Shop analytics 

To track performance in your TikTok Shop seller center, start with product analytics. You'll find this right under “Insights” on the left-hand side panel. 

You can use the following two methods to leverage TikTok's product analytics:

1. Monitor product summary data to identify the most popular products and stock-keeping units (SKUs) quickly. Check the status of products and SKUs as well.
2. Access the historical performance of all products and SKUs. Here, you can analyze product transactions, Shop Tab traffic, content performance, and pricing strategies to adjust your operations accordingly.

On the product analytics main page, you'll find a range of features such as:

• Search: Look up products by name, ID, or SKU (Stock Keeping Unit).
• Filter: Sort by category, or product status, or select a specific time range within the last 90 days.
• Product/SKU list: Access key information such as product name, status, GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), orders, and gross sales. You can also customize which metrics to display and view detailed insights by clicking on each product.

Additionally, on the product details page of the TikTok app or browser, you can assess reasons for changes in product performance, analyze traffic funnels, and evaluate content that drives the most sales. 

Plus the data on ratings, inventory, pricing, and canceled/refunded units will give you a comprehensive view of how your products are performing.

2. Best TikTok affiliate management software 

While TikTok Shop analytics provide valuable product-level insights, they might not offer the full picture of your affiliate program’s performance. For a more in-depth view, you need an additional tracking tool that can monitor influencer contributions and overall program efficiency at a deeper level.

For instance, with Social Snowball's advanced TikTok affiliate management software, you can:

• Track the revenue generated by each influencer or affiliate across campaigns.
• Set custom attribution windows to suit your business model.
• Automatically generate UTM links and discount codes for each new affiliate.
• Identify top-performing affiliates and products through comprehensive metrics.

Not just that, our native TikTok Shop integration can unify the sign-up flow for both TikTok Shop and other DTC programs, simplifying the process further for you and your affiliates. Want to get a detailed walkthrough of how it works? Book a demo with our team.

How to safeguard and prevent affiliate marketing fraud or code leaks? 

One of the biggest challenges in affiliate marketing is preventing code leakage and coupon fraud. To safeguard your program, you can use tools that generate secure, single-use discount codes so that every customer interaction is tracked properly.

For instance, Safelinks generates unique, single-use discount codes for every customer who clicks on an affiliate link, eliminating the risk of coupon fraud and misattribution.

Affiliates can promote these links like regular affiliate links on any social media platform such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. Additionally, you can even customize link formats and UTM parameters to fit your tracking needs without disrupting your existing affiliate relationships. 

Here's what Andrew Jeter, Director of Growth at Tumble, has to say about their experience of using Safelinks and how it helped them.

4 Best practices to run a successful TikTok Shop affiliate program 

With the right TikTok strategies in place, you can build an affiliate community that actively promotes your brand while earning commissions. Here’s how you can run a successful TikTok Shop affiliate program with actionable tips and examples to help you stand out.

1. Provide detailed product how-to’s and resources

Detailed product how-to’s and resources will help them with everything they need in order to explain the value of your product and show it in action.

• Create video tutorials that walk through your products’ features and benefits. These will help affiliates understand your product’s best features and they can even showcase these as demos in their promotions. 
• Offer step-by-step guides, infographics, and downloadable PDFs that your affiliates can share with their audience. 
• Provide content templates, including caption ideas, hashtags, and TikTok video scripts. This will simplify the affiliate’s journey, helping them focus on amplifying their efforts without stress. 

A great example is Fortnine, a motorsports equipment brand. They build hilarious and informative product videos, making it fun to learn how to use their products. You can apply the same concept by creating engaging and light-hearted product demos that affiliates can share with their audience.

2. Share top-performing content from other affiliates

Don’t just share surface-level strategies without proper direction. Show your affiliates how it's done by regularly sharing top-performing content from your best brand advocates. This will inspire new ideas and keep them motivated to step up their game.

• Send out a monthly roundup of the best affiliate TikTok videos or posts. Talk about exactly what made them work, whether it was creativity, a specific hashtag, or engagement tactics.
• Share case studies that break down how certain affiliates started their journey and achieved success. Show special tips and tricks on how they drove high sales or created viral content.
• Consider developing a resource hub where affiliates can access top-performing content, including successful blog posts, social media campaigns, email templates, videos, and other creative assets.
• Host webinars where your best affiliates can share their journey and learnings with your other brand advocates.
• Encourage friendly competition by featuring a leaderboard of top affiliates based on sales and engagement.

For example, Smackin', a flavored sunflower seeds brand, could share a detailed breakdown of how their top affiliates went viral. Did they show different, quirky ways to enjoy sunflower seeds on TikTok? Or posted aesthetic product reels? 

This will help highlight the top-performing affiliate’s creativity (like adding seeds to a smoothie for crunch) and encourage others to think outside the box when promoting your products.

3. Offer personalized incentives 

Offering competitive commissions isn’t enough. You need to get creative with your incentives to keep affiliates from deflecting to competitors. Solution? Personalized rewards. It shows that the brand knows its affiliates and cares about their needs and satisfaction.

Here’s what you can do:

• Boost commissions during special promotions or product launches to get affiliates excited about sharing new products.
• Let affiliates choose how they want to redeem their rewards from a range of options. These can be products, vouchers, cash rewards, and more. For instance, if you use Social Snowball, you will be able to offer 700+ reward options to your affiliates.
• Hold engagement contests and keep your brand swags and merch hamper as a reward. 
• Gamify your program by organizing monthly giveaways for hitting certain targets, like driving a set number of sales within that month.
• Consider giving free products to your top affiliates to try out, especially during high-sales periods or when you’re launching a new product. This will bring more authenticity to their promotions.

Take a cue from Rxbar, a protein snacks brand, which ran a giveaway contest to create urgency and excitement. They offered participants the chance to win a year’s worth of bars and gym equipment, while the winner’s ex got a gift card to a different gym.

4. Create tiered rewards to keep affiliates motivated

Not every affiliate is going to perform the same, so offering tiered rewards is a smart way to keep everyone motivated. This approach rewards higher performers while giving new affiliates something to aspire to.

• Design your rewards program so that affiliates can move up tiers based on sales performance or other key metrics.
• Offer better incentives for top-tier affiliates, such as higher commissions, free products, or early access to new launches.
• Give personalized support to your best affiliates, such as one-on-one meetings to strategize ways to increase their sales and commissions.

Conclusion

By tracking key performance metrics like engagement, follower growth, and revenue, you can avoid overspending, optimize your strategy, and identify top-performing affiliates. 

With Social Snowball, you can unify and streamline your TikTok Shop and DTC affiliate programs, recruit more affiliates automatically, and save time by managing everything in one place. Book a demo now to see how Social Snowball can boost your affiliate sales and save your team hours of manual work!

Frequently asked questions 

1. What’s the best way to motivate TikTok Shop affiliates?

The best way to motivate affiliates is by offering competitive commissions, clear resources, and frequent incentives like bonuses or tiered rewards. Keeping affiliates engaged with regular communication, and support, and highlighting their success also drives higher performance.

 2. How do you calculate the ROI of affiliate marketing? 

To calculate the ROI of affiliate marketing, divide the total revenue generated by affiliates by the total cost of running the program (including commissions and resources). The result shows how much revenue is earned for each dollar spent on affiliate marketing.

3. What is affiliate code fraud? 

Affiliate code fraud occurs when affiliates use deceptive practices to generate fake sales or inflate commissions, such as self-referrals or coupon stacking. It can harm your brand and result in paying commissions for non-legitimate transactions.

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